News
GKIDS Theatrically Screens Spirited Away Stage Play This Spring
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
GKIDS announced on Wednesday that it has licensed the filmed performances of Spirited Away: Live on Stage, the stage play adaptation of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away anime film, and will screen them in North America beginning this spring.
The stage play ran in Japan with two different sets of cast members. GKIDS will screen two different filmed performances, each featuring a differnet set of the cast.
Actresses Kanna Hashimoto (Gintama, Kaguya-sama: Love is War, Kingdom) and Mone Kamishiraishi (your name., live-action Chihayafuru) both starred as Chihiro. The cast also includes (in alternating performances):
- Kotarō Daigo and Hiroki Miura as Haku
- Koharu Sugawara and Tomohiko Tsujimoto as Kaonashi (No-Face)
- Miyu Sakihi and Fu Hinami as Lin and Chihiro's mother
- Tomorowo Taguchi and Satoshi Hashimoto as Kamaji
- Mari Natsuki and Romi Park as Yubaba and Zeniba
The play ran at TOHO's Imperial Theatre from February to March 2022, then planned to tour to Osaka in April, Fukuoka in May, Sapporo in June, and Nagoya in June and July. Some Fukuoka performances of the stage play were canceled to Hashimoto being diagnosed with COVID-19, and similarly canceled some Nagoya performances due to Park, Kamishiraishi, and some staff and cast members also being infected with COVID-19.
Tony and Olivier Award-winning director and the Royal Shakespeare Company's Honorary Associate Director John Caird (Les Misérables, Nicholas Nickleby, Daddy Long Legs) wrote and directed the production.
Spirited Away was previously the highest-grossing Japanese film worldwide until Demon Slayer – Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train surpassed the record. Spirited Away remains the only non-English-language title to win the Academy Awards' Best Animated Feature award, which it earned in 2003.
Source: Press release
